Elmer Barkley, age 17, stumbles out of his small log cabin in the tenements of District 7. He's wearing his best reaping shirt — a dark green button down with orange stripes going down the front, and a pair of sturdy cargo shorts. He's accompanied by his mother and father, as well as his seven other siblings. He's the fourth, not the oldest but not the youngest. No, Elmer sits in the dreaded middle child position, subject to mockery by both ends of the spectrum.
Mockery is indeed something Elmer is used to. The kids at school pick on him, call him 'big dumb Elmer' because, as the title suggests, he's not as bright as the rest of his classmates. It's not his fault that he can't keep up with them though, there's just too many things surrounding him to look at. When a bug enters the classroom, it becomes his new main focus. He gets distracted by the songbirds outside and misses important stretches of lessons, causing him to bottom out on all the exams. He's three grades behind and is likely about to be four with the way that algebra is going. All it takes is for him to get halfway through the classroom jar of paste, confusing it for the oats that his mother packed, and his fate is sealed. Even the adults around him look at him with pity, shaking their heads and clucking their tongues, whispering behind his back. Poor Elmer Barkley, big dumb Elmer Barkley who's never going to be more than a lumber grunt.
It's enough to bring him to tears some nights, upon which his mother and father will come into the bedroom that the seven children share and kneel next to his bed to quietly kiss him goodnight; hold him and rub his back until he feels better and is able to sleep. They have long, hushed talks with his doctor and finally decide to tell him (because he can't possibly know this himself) that he has something called ADHD, which means that he learns just a little bit differently than everyone else. Elmer hates it. He thinks he has a special brain; that it makes him cursed to never fit in with anyone else. Elmer doesn't know that his twenty-track mind isn't a curse, but rather a blessing in disguise. It's something that will make it easy for him to keep track of whizzing knives and flying arrows and wherever that District 10 tribute is skulking with her nasty scimitar. It's something that, accompanied by his 6-foot-tall 3-foot-wide build, will ensure his survival in the arena. Because Elmer Barkley can't possibly expect this to happen, but the escort picks up a piece of paper and says something and while he's distracted by the ants crawling on the ground next to him his entire family surrounds him wailing and have to be pulled off as he's frog-marched towards the stage.
Because Elmer Barkley is going into the Hunger Games.
The train ride is long and uncomfortable. The cabin is already cramped to begin with, but Elmer's not doing the other tributes any favors with his enormous size. He takes up almost half of the wall by himself and is impossible to ignore. His district partner crowds beside him, desperate to hide herself from the competition. She's a tiny young thing from the lumber camps next to where Elmer's family lives, reaped at the young age of 13 and doomed to a miserable death. She's shivering, barely able to stand with how her sobs wrack her body, and Elmer wants to comfort her but he can't because he's crying himself. The District 2 boy notices this and begins mocking him, threatening him with words and then his fists. The boy checks him off as an easy target. The big dumb lumberjack — all brawn, no brains. The boy from 2 is trouble indeed, being a regular juvenile delinquent back home. He's been training ever since his name was called, recruited by the two best fighters that District 2 has to offer, and he thinks this makes him invincible. He plans to pick Elmer off in the bloodbath, to dance around him and stick his giant body with a sword and watch him fall. The boy doesn't know that Elmer is the three time wrestling champion of his high school, that he can bring down small trees with a single one-handed swing of his axe. He doesn't know that when he gets close to Elmer he'll have his skull grabbed like an apple, that in a panic and a rage Elmer will make the primal hand motion that comes the most naturally to him, that he'll feel his head pop like an overripe melon as his eyes bulge and squeeze out of his skull. He doesn't know that his secret mentors are watching, wanting to do the same to him for making enemies before the Games even begin. He doesn't know any of this when he jeers and boos and makes faces at his eventual killer.
The girl from 6 sits in the corner, curled into a ball watching this exchange occur. She's smarter than people think, growing up in the ghettos of 6, but being reaped was still a death sentence. At four foot eight and 70 pounds soaking wet, she's malnourished and clearly already morphing dependent, born to a pair of addicts in a drug den. She looks around at the room and knows that she stands no chance, that the years of sharing used needles with her parents has taken an irreparable toll on her body. Even now, she's shaking from the withdrawal. It's all she can do to beg for a quick death. What she doesn't know is that she's more of a survivor than she thinks she is. That the years of starvation and malnutrition have made her a smaller target that most other tributes will ignore. She doesn't know that through sheer instinct, she'll dodge and weave her way away from the bloodbath, then keep running and hiding until there's only four tributes left. Most of all, she doesn't know that when she finally trips and stumbles, it'll be into the brick wall that is Elmer Barkley, that he'll take one look at her pitiful, emaciated body and put his arms around her in the first hug she's ever had in her entire life. He'll stroke her hair and tell her that it's okay, that she's done well and she can stop fighting. She doesn't know that while she's melting in his arms, he'll tearfully put his hands around her head and twist as hard as he can, but she won't even feel it because he's so strong and precise. She doesn't know that the last thing she'll ever feel before nothing is safe. She doesn't know any of this as she lays on the dingy train floor, shaking as she the morphing withdrawal takes over.
The boy and girl from 4 watch silently, taking everything in. They know better than to intervene, they understand enough to let the boy from 2 dig his own grave. They're smart enough to wait until the boy tires himself out before walking up to Elmer and befriending him, to offer him a hug and kind words. It's the first nice thing Elmer's heard in a while, and he'll stand by them throughout the whole Games. They've been watching the Games, noting the mistakes that the rest of their District makes. Marlin won by teaming up, so they will too. They know that they can use the large boy to take out the rest of the field, then take him down in a two-on-one assault. And so they approach him with smiling faces and knives hidden behind their back. What they don't know is that their plan will work too well; that the three of them will mow down their competition in record time, leaving Elmer to fend for himself. They don't realize that giving someone from District 7 an axe is the worst mistake anyone can possibly make in the Games, that Elmer and his siblings have been playing with them since he was 5, that he'll cut the girl from District 4 nearly clean down the middle with one fell swoop. They don't know that as the boy from 4 sprints away with breakneck speed, racing to turn this into a long-distance game that he can win with his trident, Elmer is closing his eyes and pretending to be back in the pubs of 7, where axe-throwing is a nightly tradition. He's never missed before, and he knows as he releases the handle that he still hasn't. They don't know any of this as they sit by him and exchange names and handshakes.
When the trumpets sound and Elmer stands alone, he doesn't know how to feel. Relief, perhaps, at still being alive? Grief at the children he had to kill to get there? Anger at the Capitol for putting him in the Games? Like most things, Elmer has no idea. He doesn't know that when he leaves the arena and heads home, he'll be greeted with open arms and hailed as a hero by those who once bullied him. A district just happy to finally see one of their kids come back alive will embrace him wholly, and he'll never be ostracized again. When his Parcel Day comes late after the 11th Games, the district will virtually worship him as a deity. He'll keep hundreds from going hungry, and they'll never be able to repay the debt they owe him, not that he ever plans to collect. He'll have free drinks at every tavern for the rest of his life, and little kids running up to see the tall mountain that made it back. District 7 stands together, and they stand tall.
He doesn't know that in five years, he'll be back in the hell of the arena, only as a mentor this time, and that he'll relive his own Games each and every year while watching a fresh set of tributes die. He has no idea that he's the first of a long list of District 7 lumberjacks that shock the world by making it home. He doesn't know that many, many more will be cut down like trees in the most gruesome ways imaginable. He doesn't know that he'll watch his youngest brother's name be called, that he'll watch from the mentor's station as poor Eli gets carved up bit by bit, disassembled systematically by the Career pack in the 14th. He'll never trust anyone from an inner district after that.
Elmer doesn't know how important he'll be to the revolution that has yet to occur. That he'll have 52 more fulfilling years before seeing a truck carrying the daily harvest make a sharp turn, sending several dozen freshly cut trees tumbling towards a young and wayward Johanna Mason. He'll swoop in and save her, push her out of the way, but in his old age moving is hard and he won't be able to get himself out of the log's trajectory before they come crashing down. Elmer has no clue that Johanna will then go on to save the life of the Mockingjay in a way that can never quite be repaid.
He doesn't know how much he'll be mourned. They'll shut down streets and hold a funeral procession that lasts for hours; people will wear black for a week. He doesn't know that he'll be venerated as a mythical figure by Juniper and Blight and Johanna and all the other young boys and girls who learn to swing an axe well enough to hold the title of Victor. That they'll visit his grave every year to make sure it's never empty of flowers.
Elmer has no idea about any of this when the trumpets go off and they declare him the Victor of the Sixth Hunger Games. All he knows is that he's going back to District 7, to the smell of fresh pine and coffee in the morning, to the arms of his family and the ones that he loves.
And when he reaches his mother and embraces her as tight as he can while cheering crowds chant his name, he knows one thing.
This is his home.
Author's Note - We're getting some plot next chapter. Brace yourself.